Apple will release a larger iPad with a 12.9″ screen in early 2015, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

Read more »

Having an external monitor hooked up to a Mac can boost productivity significantly, and most users who get a secondary screen just hook it up and start using it – it works, so why mess around, right? But to get the best picture and color representation out of your external display, you’ll want to take the time to calibrate the screen through a built-in OS X utility. In fact, you should probably calibrate every display you use with your Mac.

Read more »

Aside from using apps like Photoshop, one of the best ways to make a contact sheet on the Mac is to use Automator to generate the thumbnail sheet as needed. But because Automator requires the usage of an OS X scripting utility, it’s beyond the comfort level of many users, and it also takes time to set up the Automator thumbnail script. If you just need to quickly create a contact sheet of image thumbnails for proofing, you may not have the time for that.

That’s where this trick comes into play, it’ll quickly generate a thumbnail contact sheet of pictures almost instantly and with very little effort. The downside, however, is that the generated quick and dirty proof sheet is not particularly high DPI, meaning you’ll want to keep these for digital usage only – printing them out is just not going to look that good.

Read more »

Modern versions of iOS changed how Safari looks when a web page is loaded, particularly on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. To save screen space on these devices, all of the Safari navigation buttons disappear automatically once you start scrolling through a web page, hiding your standard back and forward features and other buttons. While this helps to reduce onscreen buttons and also aids in emphasizing the web page you are viewing on the smaller displays, it’s also rather confusing for some users to find the back/forward navigation, sharing, bookmarks, and tabs buttons to disappear, particularly if they aren’t familiar with how this feature works in Safari for iOS.

Read more »

The newest iPhone models support the recording of slow motion video with the native Camera app. This nifty feature was first introduced as a major part of the modern iPhone cameras and is able to shoot 1080p or 720p movies at 240 or 120 frames per second. But that doesn’t mean that slow-motion is limited only to the latest and greatest iPhones, in fact, you can use third party apps to record slow motion video on older iPhone models too. In either case, the result are really fancy slow motion videos, which can be a great way to emphasize particular scenes, events, or just to see the action better of whatever you’re recording.

Read more »

If your iPhone 5 battery suddenly shuts itself off, experiences shorter battery life than expected, or needs to be charged seemingly constantly, it may be a result of a battery issue that impacts some iPhone 5 devices, and Apple will now fix the issue for free.

Read more »

If you’ve recently made a change to your iPhone service or SIM card, you may notice a mysterious red blank dot on the “Phone” app of the iPhone home screen. Typically that little blank red dot means you have voicemail, but the iPhone can’t retrieve it, and it usually occurs in one of the following scenarios: the iPhone has just been restored or reset, the iPhone has a new SIM card inserted into it with a different phone number or service plan, or the associated phone voicemail password has been changed.

Read more »

The Twitter for Mac client has a peculiar feature (bug?) which causes the app image cache to grow endlessly and without limitation. That means the Twitter image cache folder can easily become several gigabytes in size unbeknownst to the end user, and those cache files are also stored in virtual memory, which can cause unnecessary RAM usage and swapping on a Mac. Thus, if you use the Twitter app in OS X, you may want to manually intervene from time to time to delete this image cache, otherwise you’ll find your disk space slowly disappearing as the cached image files from your twitter stream get saved to disk, never clearing itself out. You also may get fed up with that manual cache deletion process and decide to prevent the app from saving any image cache, so we’ll show you how to do that too.

Read more »

How many iPhone and iPad owners wind up having a frayed USB lightning adapter with wires visible or protruding from the cable? One of my own Lightning cables ended up a frayed disaster after less than a year of being always plugged into a MacBook, and only used on a desk – not exactly demanding usage conditions – and I run into many others who have similar issues with Apple USB adapters for iOS devices. So, what should users do about the frayed cables?

Read more »

Don’t you hate it when you’re skydiving and lose your iPhone during a free fall? OK so probably none of us can say that has happened to them, but this hilarious picture captures the exact moment of such an event occurring at some-odd thousand feet above Earth. In the picture, a skydiver named Patrick has an enormous grin on their face, completely oblivious to their iPhone drifting out of his pocket… so long iPhone, it was so nice knowing you.

Read more »

Apple has released the second version of the OS X Yosemite Public Beta. Mac users who opted in to participate in the public beta program for Yosemite are recommended to install the update. Alongside Public Beta 2 is also a new beta version of the redesigned iTunes 12. Both updates focus on bug fixes and feature refinements as the next version of OS X marches closer towards a public release in the Fall.

Users who are actively running OS X Yosemite Beta will find the new update available to them through the Software Update mechanism of the Mac App Store. The download weighs in about 1.7 GB for both packages of the new iTunes 12 build as well as OS X Yosemite Beta 2.

Read more »

Every Mac which has the Pages app for Mac OS X installed includes a little Easter Egg that few know about; a famous Steve Jobs speech, tucked away in a little unassuming folder. Technically, it’s two different Steve Jobs speeches, the famous text from the Crazy Ones Think Different campaign, and arguably the even more famous 2005 Steve Jobs commencement speech from Stanford University.

Read more »

How often have you had a file open in one application on your Mac, only to need it opened in another OS X app instead? Fairly often, right? When confronted with that situation, most Mac users will do one of two things; go back to the Finder file system and re-open the file in the desired app, or open the other app and open the file directly from there. But there’s another way to re-open a file in one application from another, and it’s often faster and easier than the traditional methods.

Read more »

Fiddling around with your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad while driving or riding a bike is dangerous as it takes your eyes off an important task, which is why things like texting and driving are made illegal. Many of us use our iPhones and iPods in the car though for listening to podcasts and music though, particularly since AUX input is becoming a common feature of car stereos. So what are we supposed to do if we need to keep paying attention to the road (or whatever the important task is), but need to pause the music or audio? That’s where this handy trick comes into play.

Read more »

Saving a file or document as a PDF is easily done from almost anywhere in Mac OS by using the print to PDF feature, which is part of the Mac Printer service, but to trigger it you have to go to the Print menu and then specifically select to ‘print’ the file as a PDF document. But what if you want a faster method of quickly saving something as a PDF, like a keyboard shortcut? That’s what we’re going to show you how to do with a really nifty keystroke trick.

Read more »

We’ve already shared a few Yosemite themed wallpapers, but four beautiful new Yosemite wallpapers arrived along with OS X Yosemite Developer Preview 6 and you won’t want to miss these. You can get them now by clicking the thumbnail links below, even if you’re not running the developer preview build on your Mac.

Read more »

Apple may introduce a reversible USB Lightning adapter soon, marking a subtle but welcome change to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch USB connectors. The reversible portion of the cable would be the USB side that connects to a Mac or PC, as the Lightning adapter end is already reversible.

Read more »

Apple has released the 6th developer preview build of OS X Yosemite to those registered with the Mac Developer Program. The update arrives as build 14A3429f, likely includes feature refinements and bug fixes, and is recommended for all Yosemite Dev Preview users to install.

OS X Yosemite Developer Preview 6 can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for users who are running prior versions of the Developer Preview builds of OS X 10.10. Additionally, a redeemable download code can be found on the Mac Developer Center for users who have yet to install it on their Macs.

Read more »